"The novel is built around uncomplicated family love and a healthy dose of serious history," the reviewer writes. "Dogs and ponies are chapter-book stalwarts… "The Tiger's Wife" depends on a childlike sense that belief in the unbelievable is heroic and that secrets are sacred." While this book certainly addresses the issues of secrets and faith, I don't think it gives favor to them. Sure, Natalia's grandfather's insistence that she not tell her friends about the elephant sighting is admirable, but there seems to be more to this theme than the air of mystery that accompanies secrecy. In Chapter 4, when Luka and Jovo tell the story of the blacksmith's death to the town, they lie and embellish. This is a nod to the inaccuracies of storytelling and folklore, the meaning that can be lost when things are shared. Natalia also constantly refers to herself and her grandfather as "self righteous." She recognizes and calls attention to their stubborn beliefs, their reckless actions when encountering The Deathless Man, and other flaws. This does not seem like childlike narration to me. One aspect of this review I do agree with is this: "As for death, Ms. Obreht mostly reduces it to spookiness. There’s a campfire quality to the story of the deathless man."

Though badly injured from the attack, the tiger, along with a handful of other animals, escapes the zoo and begins a journey. The theme of faith is still present in this chapter, as many villagers who witness the tiger distrust their senses: "People must have seen him, but in the wake of bombardment he was anything but a tiger to them: a joke, an insanity, a religious hallucination." This begins a discrimination against the tiger that carries on throughout the book. This blind dislike mirrors the prejudices humans have against other humans who aren't from their country. The tiger rambles onward with no destination, "only… some vague, inborn sense of what he was looking for." Similarly, Natalia describes her path to Galina, the town her grandfather grew up in. This portion of the book allows for vivid descriptions of the countryside and local food (rose-hip jam and walnut rakija? Yum!). Next we learn of Natalia's grandfather's upbringing. His grandmother, the town midwife, raised him to be structured and orderly--a sheepherder. But he became infatuated with reading on duty and visiting the town apothecary instead. When the tiger arrives in her grandfather's town, the villagers view the event as an attack, a war of sorts. But Natalia's grandfather is fascinated, mostly because his reading of "The Jungle Book" has romanticized the tiger, comparing it to the complicated antagonist Shere Khan. He shares this with the deaf-mute girl, whose company he enjoys because she seems to be one of the few townspeople who sees the good in the "enemy," the tiger. The chapter concludes with men and dogs from the town attempting to hunt down the tiger, much to Natalia's grandfather's dismay. The hunt gives interesting insight into storytelling, our tendencies to embellish, and the truth of events versus the history that exists in collective memories. This is shown in the way Luke and Jovo discuss the blacksmith's death. They dramatize the event as a valiant fight against the tiger, but in reality he took his own life out of fear.

We learn about the forty days of the soul's journey home - a common belief in the Eastern Orthodox religion. (Here's a link that explains how it works according to St. John Maximovitch) And the grandfather is already dead. He died in "an obscure town called Zdrevkov", whose name is the first confirmation we have that our story takes place somewhere in central Europe, probably the Balkans. Google Maps offers a few possibilities for that name, possibly all of them wrong. After all, the narrator can't find it on the map either. But we're likely in the right kind of area. Our narrator, still unnamed, is "at the last service station before the border", traveling to an orphanage in Brejevina, "up the coast" with a friend and colleague who is escaping the state prosecutor, as she does not want to denounce her former boss, thus ending her career. The pair are there to deliver inoculations to an orphanage - but also to run from the lives they put on hold behind them. Our narrator knew about her grandfather's cancer, but had kept it from her grandmother. We hear her grandfather's voice, both old fashioned and profane: "Fuck. You go looking for a gnat and you find a donkey." We learn a lot about our narrator and her medical career, we see burgers served out of an army truck, we meet a parrot who proclaims poetry, and a vineyard filled with men digging for something, who are people looked down upon by Nada Ivan, the girls' host. Many of them are sick, and they carry mysterious, "stinking" pouches: "whoever heard of such a thing - we Catholics don't have it, the Muslims don't have it." So who are these people? Why are their children sick? Why do their children have to beg for milk and sweets? And what are they digging for? Are you intrigued by the mysteries so far? Where do you think it's set - and when? And what poetry is that creepy parrot reciting?

The book opens in the zoo, with the memories of a four-year-old... someone. We learn a great deal from the compact descriptions, details that might prove significant. Here's a few - which do you think might be important?
- We learn that the lady at the ticket counter calls her grandfather 'Doctor' - he is clearly a man of local standing. "Even though my grandfather is not wearing his stethoscope" - he's a medical doctor, then.
- He "always" carries a copy of The Jungle Book, but he doesn't allow his granddaughter to touch it, which is a strange detail.
- "Once there was a king here, a sultan" - we are in a country where Ottoman history is likely ever present.
- The tiger's wife is mentioned, but only in passing - because the little girl thinks that is her.
- A place name: Galina.
- The girl, now grown up, works in a pathology lab.
- The tiger in the zoo attacks the dustpan keeper, during which the tiger is described in human-like ways, giving "an outraged scream"... "it's no longer worth it, and the tiger lets go."
- Her grandfather calls the man a fool, yet is compelled to try and help him.

And we open with a graphic memory involving violence, a tiger, and a little girl's grandfather.

That's a lot to take in, in three pages. Especially when the next page opens with "The forty days of the soul being on the morning after death." What do you think of the opening? Leave your comments below, tweet using #hpbookclub or email us: hpbookclub@huffingtonpost.com